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Transcorp to Start Drilling Plans After Nigeria Oilfield Deal

Transnational Corp. of Nigeria Plc , which has interests ranging from agriculture to oil, said it will drill wells on its prospecting lease after signing a production-sharing deal with the state oil company. Transcorp paid $30 million for oil-prospecting lease 281, or OPL 281, following a sale by the Nigerian government in 2007. The lease holds an estimated 104 million barrels of oil reserves, 335 million barrels of probable additional reserves and about 4 trillion cubic feet of gas, the Lagos-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. “We are excited by this development and the opportunity to fully exploit the huge reserves and gas resources,” said company Chairman Tony Elumelu. “We will produce enough gas to run our Ughelli plant to its current installed capacity of 1,000 megawatt and expand this to over 3,000 megawatt in the near future.” Transcorp, 44 percent owned by Elumelu, was set up […]

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Marxist Rebel Bombings Send Colombia Oil Output to 20-Month Low

Colombian crude production sank to a 20-month low in April as Marxist rebel attacks and community protests curbed output amid continuing peace talks in Havana . Oil production last month averaged 935,000 barrels per day, according to a government statement yesterday, the lowest since August 2012. Output slumped as repairs to the country’s second-largest pipeline following a March 25 rebel attack were prevented by the indigenous U’wa group. Paralysis at the Cano Limon-Covenas duct, which takes oil from eastern Colombia to the Caribbean coast, forced producers including state-controlled Ecopetrol SA (ECOPETL) to restrict output as storage ran out. Oil is Colombia’s biggest export and a key source of revenue for the government. There were 33 pipeline attacks in the first quarter of this year and a total of 259 in 2013, as Colombia’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, seeks to strengthen its hand […]

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Cnooc Oil Rig Fuels Vietnam-China Tensions

Vietnam accused a Chinese energy company of operating in its waters illegally, potentially ratcheting up tensions further between the two countries. On Saturday, China’s Maritime Safety Administration disclosed the location of China National Offshore Oil Corp.’s HD-981 oil rig. The area is in part of the South China Sea that Vietnam claims as its "exclusive economic zone," said Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh. "All activities by a foreign entity in Vietnamese waters without Vietnam’s consent are illegal and invalid, and Vietnam strongly protests [such activities]," Mr. Binh said in a statement posted on the government’s website late Sunday. The area the Cnooc rig is operating in is "only 120 nautical miles from Vietnam’s shore," the statement added. At a daily press briefing on Monday, China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the rig was in Chinese waters. "As we understand it, the Chinese Maritime Safety Administration issued […]

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China Starts 19th Nuclear Power Reactor Amid Construction Push

China fired up its 19th nuclear reactor as the nation pushed to more than double its expansion of atomic power generation capacity this year, which may boost demand for imported uranium. The Ningde No. 2 reactor in the southern province of Fujian started commercial operations yesterday, according to a statement posted on the website of the State Council’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission today. The facility is owned by China General Nuclear Power, the nation’s biggest nuclear producer. Its No. 1 reactor resumed production on April 29 after maintenance , the statement shows. China may need to import more than 80 percent of its uranium by 2020 as it expands its nuclear construction and operations, compared with about 60 percent currently, Tian Miao, an analyst at North Square Blue Oak Ltd., a London-based policy researcher, said by phone today. The nation will add 8.64 gigawatts of atomic capacity […]

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Obama Intensifies Focus on Climate With New Assessment Report

President Barack Obama will argue this week that the effects of climate change must be confronted now, intensifying his focus on the issue a month before new and contentious rules are due out that will regulate emissions from existing power plants. Tuesday’s release of a report called the national climate assessment will kick-start the administration’s push on an issue the president views as a key component of his legacy. The document, mandated by Congress and written by a federal advisory panel, will assess the impact global warming will have on specific regions of the country and sectors of the economy. The report and a series of events in the next few days offer Mr. Obama an opportunity to reassure his liberal allies, who have long urged a more aggressive approach to climate change. Mr. Obama has told environmental leaders, including some top Democratic donors, his administration is ready to […]

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Oxy production up nearly 4 percent year-on-year

U.S. energy company Occidental Petroleum said Monday its domestic oil production increased 3.7 percent from the same time last year. Occidental said its oil and gas business generated $2.1 billion in earnings during the first quarter of 2014, compared with $1.9 billion during first quarter 2013. "We continued to focus on our domestic production growth strategy, growing our oil production to 274,000 barrels per day," President and CEO Stephen Chazen said in a statement . "This was an increase of 10,000 barrels per day on a year-over-year basis and 4,000 barrels per day on a quarter-over-quarter basis." Occidental, commonly referred to as Oxy, credited its strong performance with higher oil and natural gas prices. In the Middle East and North African sector, the company said its production declined 14,000 barrels of oil per day compared with the same time last year because of port […]

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BP has record 11 deepwater rigs running in Gulf of Mexico: BP America CEO

Four years after the Macondo oil spill, BP has 11 operated rigs running in the US Gulf of Mexico, the most the company has ever had there at one time, BP America’s CEO said Monday. BP will spend $10 billion over the next five years in the deepwater US Gulf, which amounts to about 10% of its worldwide exploration and production budget and makes the company the largest investor in that arena, said John Minge, who is also BP America’s chairman and CEO. "Our business is back; it’s strong and it’s gaining momentum," Minge said. "It wasn’t long ago when the common belief was that the region was played out, that deepwater wasn’t going to work and it was better to head off to other places. But we had [employees] who said there’s more there, and convinced the leadership to invest further." Minge was […]

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Rail service returning to Lynchburg, Va.

Some of the railcars involved in last week’s accident involving a train carrying crude oil through Lynchburg, Va., were moved, CSX Corp. said. The rail company said rail operations resumed late Sunday, allowing some of the cars involved in last week’s accident to be reset and moved. "Over the next day or two, product will be removed from the remaining cars," the company said in a Sunday statement . "Once complete, those cars will then be moved out safely." Some of the rail cars involved in the accident were carrying crude oil from the Bakken reserve area in North Dakota to a Virginia refinery. U.S. regulators in January warned Bakken crude oil may be more flammable than other grades. Three railcars involved in the accident caught fire, though no injuries were reported from the accident. CSX said last week it pulled two railcars […]

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Ukraine Unrest Intensifies as Toll Rises From Offensive

Surging casualties are threatening to undermine Ukraine’s campaign to regain ground from pro-Russian militants in its easternmost cities, where insurgents killed four government troops and downed a military helicopter. Four government servicemen died yesterday in fighting that may have killed about 30 rebels, acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on his Facebook account. French President Francois Hollande said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that Europe would continue to pressure him to let Ukraine hold a May 25 presidential election and if it is thwarted, “chaos and a risk of war” would follow. “We must do everything to avoid civil war,” Hollande said on France ’s BFM TV-RMC radio today. “You know when it starts but never when it ends.” Efforts by the government in Kiev to expel insurgents from the easternmost regions are at risk of stalling less than three weeks before the ballot. German Chancellor Angela Merkel […]

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Europe Must Embrace Fracking, U.K. Energy Minister Says

The Ukraine crisis has become a “wake-up call” for European governments on the need to develop local energy resources, including natural gas from shale, U.K. Energy Minister said. The use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to tap shale reserves that could meet demand for decades would provide greater security of supply at a time when Russia has threatened to curb gas shipments needed to power European economies, he said in an interview in Houston yesterday. “We have to ensure that we do maximize our indigenous resources,” Fallon said. “We can’t be reliant on dodgy parts of the world.” Escalating violence in Ukraine fanned by Russian separatists has intensified calls to develop local prospects, especially in countries such as Bulgaria that are more reliant on Russian gas, he said. Russia provides about a third of the EU’s oil and gas needs, mainly via state-controlled OAO Gazprom (GAZP) and OAO Rosneft […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple